Medicine

Everything You Need To Know About The New, More Effective HPV Vaccine

A recently approved vaccine called Gardasil 9 protects against more strains of HPV and HPV-related cancers than any vaccine currently available. But who should get it? And how did it get so much better? Here’s a complete rundown on the state of the art in HPV-cancer prevention. Image Credit: Getty In June 2006, the U.S.…

​Why Freezing to Death Makes You Want To Get Naked

Victims of exposure and hypothermia never have a good time of it, but sometimes they engage in a behavior that’s both understandable and horrifying. It’s called “terminal burrowing behavior,” and involves losing their minds, running away, and crawling into a hole to die. Patrick Dolan and the Donner Party In the winter of 1847, the…

Rare Images Of A Baby Born While Still Inside The Amniotic Sac

In what the delivery doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles described as “a moment of awe,” a baby born at 26 weeks via cesarean section entered into the world while still completely wrapped in the amniotic sac. Warning: (fairly tame) medical images to follow. Immediately after the emergency c-section, the baby, Silas Philips,…

Graphene Could Be Used to Neutralize Cancer Stem Cells

Graphene has a frankly overwhelming array of amazing possible uses, from body armor to seeing through walls. To that list, you can perhaps add the ability to fight cancer, too. Researchers at the University of Manchester in the UK—the birthplace of graphene—have used the 2D carbon material to target and neutralise cancer stem cells. Using…

This Neuroscientist Says He’ll Do a Human Head Transplant Very Soon

An Italian neuroscientist who has been advocating for head transplants now wants to make one actually happen. He’ll be announcing a project at a surgical conference later this year. Here’s how the proposed human head transplant will work—supposedly. In 2013, Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group proposed that human head transplants could soon…

Three Men Have Had Hands Amputated and Replaced With Bionic Versions

Three men with severe nerve damage have voluntarily had their hands amputated and replaced with prothetic versions that they’re able to control with their minds. The procedure—performed by Oskar Aszmann at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, and now published in The Lancet—has been called “bionic reconstruction.” Each of the patients involved has suffered damage…

No, These Apps Can’t Detect Cancer. Just Stop.

A slew of apps have cropped up touting the ability to diagnose any number of diseases over the past few years, and now thanks to the federal trade commission, at least two of them will have to stop. Because science isn’t backing up any of it. The apps currently in question, MelApp and Mole Detective,…

These Mice on a Treadmill Show Weight Loss Drugs in Action

Cheap, effective and—above all—safe weight loss drugs could help ease the obesity epidemic. These mice demonstrate how a new weight loss jab called morpholino works, as they scuttle along a treadmill. Images using infrared as they exercise, the different colors reveal how much energy different parts of creatures are using—red means a lot. On the…

Lawmaker Asks If Women Can Swallow Camera… For Gynecological Exams

During a debate over abortion legislation Monday between Idaho lawmakers, Republican state representative Vito Barbieri asked whether it would be possible for a woman to swallow a small camera, so that doctors might perform a remote gynecological examination (presumably, à la capsule endoscopy). Above: Vito Barbieri | Credit: Matt Cilley/AP According to the Associated Press,…

The World Health Organization Urges Switch To “Smart” Syringes By 2020

By using the same syringe to give injections to multiple people, health practitioners around the world are significantly driving the spread of many deadly infectious diseases. In an effort to deal with this problem, the WHO is pushing for syringes that cannot be used more than once — and they want this worldwide switch to…

Iron Is Better Than Fluoride At Preventing Cavities, But There’s A Catch

Materials scientists studying beavers have discovered why the crafty rodents never get cavities: the enamel in their teeth is rich in iron. Iron, they found, resists acid more effectively than fluoride. Scientific American reports: If you zoom way in, tooth enamel looks almost like the weave of a basket “where each thread is made from…

Drug-Resistant Malaria Is On The Verge Of Spreading Into India

In Southeast Asia, the malaria parasite has been steadily building resistance to the drug that’s used to treat it. This scary news, but even worse: the resistance is on the verge of spreading into densely populated India. This data comes from a new study in infectious diseases publication the Lancet (read the scientific paper here).…

Did an asteroid hasten the spread of black death in Europe? Dendrochronologist and author Mike Baillie says that tree rings “reveal a major event just before 1350. Something catastrophic,” similar to the Tunguska event, changed “the composition of the atmosphere and provided ideal conditions for a lethal infection to spread,” making the population more vulnerable…

A (Mostly) Scientific Guide to Pot and the Munchies

Everybody knows it: Weed makes you hungry. Smoking a bowl sends you searching for snacks. Hitting a spliff leaves you craving all kinds of candy. Ripping a bong gives you the munchies. We don’t know why. Science is getting close though, especially after this week. It’s Friday afternoon, you’ve made it through the long week,…

The Doctor Who Would Give Men Monkey Testicles

Serge Voronoff sold the early 20th century version of male enhancement – monkey testicles. No, we don’t mean the monkey testicles were ground up and put in food, or even swallowed whole. We mean Voronoff stapled them to a person’s body. In the 1920s, a rather open-minded group of men went to Voronoff in hopes…

Are We Doomed to Get Rashes from Our Fitness Trackers?

Constant 24/7 fitness tracking can have itchy, scratchy consequences. Those would be wrist rashes, as Fitbit users have been learning. But rashes aren’t just a Fitbit problem—any wristband can leave you red, thanks to some basic biology. There may be no miracle cure for this malady of the quantified self. Our skin has the thankless…

How We Can Use Light to See Inside the Human Body

Human flesh is opaque. As any good dictionary will tell you, that means it has the quality of “not transmitting light; being impenetrable to sight.” Well, forget that: scientists now can use light to see inside objects that were traditionally off-limits to the human eye—including our bodies. Of course it’s already possible to use X-rays,…

FDA Grants 23andMe Approval to Sell Test for a Rare Genetic Condition

At the end of 2013, 23andme was ordered to stop selling its DNA testing kit health reports by the Food and Drug Administration. Now, the FDA has granted the company approval to sell a single test for the markers of Bloom Syndrome, a rare genetic disease. Bloom Syndrome is associated with short stature, sun sensitivity,…

Health Benefits Of Diet And Exercise May Be Chemically/Lazily Obtainable

Everybody knows the human immune system will respond enthusiastically to exercise and healthy eating. But is there a way to get those benefits, which include enhancing our bodies’ abilities to suppress certain kinds of inflammation, without, y’know, sweating or starving? Maybe. Hopefully. New Scientist reports: Exercising hard or not eating for a while can alter…

Caffeine Is Amazing And Terrible And Maybe Secretly Ruining Your Sleep

Are caffeinated beverages like coffee magical for fighting the symptoms of sleepiness, or are they evil for interfering with sleep and triggering symptoms commonly associated with anxiety disorders? The answer to both questions is a resounding yes! https://gizmodo.com/10-reasons-coffee-is-both-the-best-and-the-worst-bevera-5861402 Photo Credit: Susanne Nilsson | CC BY-SA 2.0 At Boing Boing, Murray Carpenter has written a sweeping…